


Down With The Ship

by lesbomancy



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Battle, Gen, Pirates, Sailing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 18:35:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6918475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbomancy/pseuds/lesbomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last moments of the Red Scales' Favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down With The Ship

“Captain! Schooner abaft!” Gerome cried from the crow’s nest. “By the-.. Two, two ships abaft!”

Shana Al-Sharam, the helmswoman, turned around to see the shadowy form of two Dominion schoonerss cut through the misty morning fog, their figureheads proudly depicting Auri-El and Phynaster. The Red Scales’ Favor had contended with these two ships before, the slower but more heavily armed schooners being moored on a particularly sharp reef when the sloop’s fast, low profile managed to avoid having their hull sliced into during a rough storm.

Lawmen. Didn’t rightly matter what they called themselves, they were all the same: something to avoid. A single-mast ship couldn’t go toe-to-toe with a three-mast ship, not with the compliment they had even if they were a larger make than most sloops. The Favor was loaded down with a fresh shipment of Moon Sugar and had just hit open ocean, somewhere that their maneuverability would mean little to a persistent captain. The two Dominion vessels split apart, oars and wind carrying them closer to the Favor with every passing second. The Altmer were natural shipsmiths, the very design of the two vessels - their sharpness below the water - had them gliding faster than the sloop could ever hope to.

Ioravlara came in from below deck, her hat proudly situated on her favorite head as she popped her spyglass out and looked through the fog at the two ships.

“All hands hoay! Dump the cargo! Al-Sharam, bring us to some cover!” She yelled.

Shana reached out and rang a bell as the call to alarm, a half-naked Viear stumbling out from below deck with a pair of the Captain’s underpants around his neck. He was busy rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he clamped onto the railing, yawning and trying to not fall overboard as Shana turned the Favor towards a small set of islands. S’Daro’shiri followed behind him, fingertips drumming at the handguard to their cutlass.

“What is going on?” The khajiit asked.

“Hunters. The Auriel’s Grace and Phynaster’s Cunning,” the Captain said, lowering her spyglass. “We need speed. Lose all the cargo, all non-essentials!”

Viear ran off and was followed by Shana, S’daro replacing her at the helm.

The Captain turned to the khajiit first mate, making sure the others were gone before speaking up. “We may have to scuttle if we can’t get them tied up on something. Must’ve been waiting for us at the inlet. Damn it!”

Below deck, Viear and Shana were busy rolling casks of moon sugar up deck, Cookie joining in to help. The schooners were closing in despite the Favor losing it’s contraband, the figureheads splashing against the waves as a storm threatened to pick up further up the coastline. As they drew closer the outline of archers on their side came into view, the Dominion’s finest pirate hunters scouring the seas for people just like the Favor’s crew and the crew knew that the Dominion didn’t take prisoners unless they were useful.

Low level smugglers were not useful.

Viear hefted the last of the moon sugar barrels over the side, looking to the series of small islands in the inlet. A lump in his throat - another schooner, sitting and waiting with it’s archers and mages lined up on the deck. He turned and whistled sharply at the helm.

“Cap’n! Cap! CAP!” He shouted with increasing volume.

The dunmer whipped around to face what Viear saw, her hand grasping the neck of the Favor’s binnacle. “S’daro! Along the coast in the shallows. The moment we find a good spot we scuttle the Favor and make a run for it.”

With a grim look on his face the khajiit turned the sloop again, the ship nearly capsizing as it avoided a sand bar. S’daro kept the Favor steady but every so often he had to swerve to avoid another obstacle or shallow sand. Shana, Cookie and Viear were all on deck, the dunmer man climbing up the mast rigging to hand Gerome his bow and a quiver full of arrows. The two shared a fist bump before Viear went back down to deck, shaking his arms out as he prepared to bring the pain. Shana and Cookie went to the starboard side with their own weapons, using what little lumber they kept below deck as makeshift shielding. The Captain was doing the same, making an arrow shield for S’daro as he steered, his arms tensing as the Favor threatened to rip itself from his grasp.

“Don’t you kill us, old man. If you do, Cookie is the new first mate,” the Captain said with a grin, readying her own barrel of arrows.

The two primary schooners closed in, the third trailing behind them at a significantly slower pace. The crew nestled in for what little fighting they had to put up with until they found a place they could run ashore to. S’daro heaved a breath as he pulled the Favor away from the sands, pointing the ship towards ocean towards a peninsula in the distance. The shoal ended with a sharp drop close to the shore, the best place he’d seen so far for all of them to climb to land without being shot in the back. Better on foot in a jungle than surrounded by slaughterfish.

Shynaster’s Cunning edged ahead of Auriel’s Grace, their archers drawing their arrows back with several of their mages preparing spells. The faint glow of their magic could be seen from where Viear stood and he started to do the same as the resident mage. A cocky grin came across his face, hands warming as the air around his fists ignited. Shana and the others all prepared themselves to fire, peeking out from their makeshift cover which they jammed or nailed into the deck at the last moment. 

Dominion fired the first shots, something that didn’t surprise anyone. They had height and high-grade equipment to use, as well as the wind on their backs. The crew of the Favor waited until the last moment, arrows bouncing off of the hull and exploding with a viscous black liquid. One of the arrows hit Viear right in the shoulder, the liquid covering nearly half of his body. The dunmer flew onto his back, his arm stinging in pain from the force of a blunted arrow hitting bone. He touched the sticky substance, running it between his fingers - not blood, thank.. Whatever.

“Kindlepitch! They’re firing gods damned kindlepitch at us!”

Cookie ripped the dunmer to his feet, pulling an arrow back and firing back at the archers on the Shynaster’s Cunning. The rest of the crew was doing the same, with the Captain firing off arrows quicker than the rest, Gerome doing his best in the crow’s nest to take out the mages. They weren’t winning by a stretch, the black liquid coating nearly the whole deck and most of the mast in the few minutes it took the Favor to cross the bay towards the other peninsula. The Captain was yelling about how they were nearly there, S’daro calling for all of them to hold on as the Auriel’s Grace pulled up on the port side.

“Mongrels!” Gerome called from his perch. Three arrows fired at the Grace’s archers, each of them killing a target.

“Once we hit the shoal, run as fast as you bloody can! I’ve a ship waiting in Vvardenfell for anyone who survives!” The Captain called out in between targets. She’d already taken an arrow to the leg which seemed only to agitate the salty mer.

The arrows firing now were real, steel-tipped and lodging deep. Viear shook his hands, throwing himself out from cover with the base of his palms pressed together as he sent a stream of flames across the deck of the Shynaster’s Cunning, setting wood, rope and cloth aflame in a snap fire. Most of it died out when he stopped casting but some remained, enough to make the crew divide up and deal with their roasted comrades of the potentially devastating fire on their own vessel.

Cookie didn’t even make a noise when they killed him, his body slumped against the impromptu cover he was using with an arrow to the neck keeping him in place, his arms hanging limply as the Favor broke through waves, minutes from the shoreline. Viear turned and sent a fireball towards the ship behind him, sweat beading on his skin as he exhausted himself with every magical exertion. He flung them out, quick and deadly. Unlike the ship behind him his fireballs had no effect on the other, burning archers and crew but not the vessel itself. He grit his teeth, feeling the growing heat behind him before Shana pulled him out of the way.

A piece of their side mast fell onto the deck of the Favor, the black liquid igniting immediately on contact. The dunmer ducked and made his way towards the front of the ship, seeing the shoal and the white, sandy tropical beach nearly within his grasp. The Auriel’s Grace pulled away from the port side, archers still firing at the crew as the Shynaster’s Cunning fell apart over the sloop, the sidemast still connected via rigging, tying the two burning vessels together in an impossible knot.  
S’daro took his aged hands off of the wheel, seeing it not even move. He grabbed the Captain by the collar and tucked himself under the arm where her wounded leg was. They began to hobble towards the burning mast, avoiding piles of flaming kindlepitch best they could on the narrow deck. Viear crawled onto the figurehead, Shana holding onto the rigging near it. The winds picked up, sending both the schooner and the sloop as fast as they could towards the beach. Gerome, stuck in the rigging as the fires grew around him, still picked off the crew abandoning the Shynaster’s Cunning. It struck him as a strange thing, their fire almost manageable, until he noticed the smoke below deck, billowing out of the port holes.

The two creaking vessels slammed into one another, Viear grasping for dear life as he nearly was shaken from the figurehead. A series of small pops and whistles sounded off from the interior of the Shynaster’s Cunning, followed by a quick boom deep in the hull. The quiet that followed was destroyed as the Cunning began to explode from the inside, pieces of it’s hull flying off and the mast collapsing in on itself. Each explosion came with a loud, piercing whistle and the Favor shook violently with the shockwave.

Viear didn’t know what they were transporting. He didn’t care, he just wanted to live. Unable to hear Shana’s cries of warning, part of the Cunning’s front mast came down towards Viear. He attempted to drop into the water, figuring a death by drowning or being run over by the Favor a lot better than becoming a bloody handprint on a flaming matchbox. He let go too late, his body jerking as his arm was pulled out of it’s socket, stuck and crushed between the figurehead of the Favor and the front mast. He blacked out for several seconds, legs beginning to kick and his arm pulling wildly as the fiery mast set the kindlepitch on his skin ablaze.

Gerome jumped from his perch, arms flailing as he hit water without incident. Viear only saw a flash of the man, unsure if the rest of the crew was already in the waters which he couldn’t get to. His skin bubbled and broke out underneath his clothing, the mer feeling thread and flesh fuse together as it was cooked, the sickening smell of boiled blood and charred mer filling his nostrils as he threatened to pass out from pain as the fire went all the way down to his ankles, searing him to where he couldn’t see anymore; he could feel his eyeball melting, the stink of his hair as it burned with the rest of him.

Shynaster’s Cunning shook once more before, it’s hull splintering into a million pieces as it exploded from the inside. The bit of mast that kept Viear in place shifted, the mass of hot air hitting him before the shockwave sent him spiraling into the air. He could barely make out the shapes as his vision blurred and he lost the fight for consciousness. It felt cool, briefly, before he hit the sea with all the grace of a rock.

The force of the landing knocked him out. Rain and storms followed, the waves reaching high and dropping low. They carried him elsewhere, away from the Favor, away from the Dominion. Away from the only life that made sense. Away from the only family he knew. Into pain and darkness.

Adrift.


End file.
